SUFFER YOURSELF
SUFFER YOURSELF “Axis Of Tortures”
By Dr. Abner Mality
With a band name like that, forget about partying and chasing skirts. The band hails from Ukraine and there’s not much of that going on over there these days. They play funeral doom metal and they’ve been walking the Earth for 12 years now.
The album has many agonizingly heavy and ponderous moments, but I don’t hear much in the way of an identity. It’s just a conglomeration of various death-doom tropes all thrown together in super long tracks. Every song here contains the word “Axis”...even the meaningless outro “Serutrot Fo Sixa”, which...oh my God!...is the title track spelled backwards. Not exactly the height of cleverness.
First two real cuts “Axis of Insanity” and “Axis of Despair” plod along for more than 15 minutes each and are combinations of MY DYING BRIDE, DISEMBOWELMENT and really rancid death doom like DEAD CONGREGATION. It’s unfailingly heavy but comes across kind of empty because there’s nothing of SUFFER YOURSELF in them. And of course, they’re too long. “Axis Of Pain” definitely leans more towards straight death metal and has some truly bone-crushing riffs...can’t argue with this one. “Axis Time” is another really long track that starts with sound effects that made me think the Monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey” had arrived. It then moves into a cut that does come across a lot of like DISEMBOWELMENT but somehow it works. The structure just seems tighter and there’s some odd sounds that make it more memorable.
Kind of a mixed bag from SUFFER YOURSELF. I could certainly wish for some tightening up and more of a unique sound, but can’t deny the death and the doom is present in large quantities.